This investigation was designed to study the patterns of perceptions of the central office administrators involved in the 1978 Tucson Unified School District teacher strike. The theoretical framework developed for this study, which was based on perceptual psychology, included the following areas: (1) perception; (2) empathy; (3) adequacy/self-concept; (4) relationships; (5) stress; and (6) perceptual framework. An interview schedule was developed based on the theoretical framework. The schedule utilized a Likert-type attitudinal scale as well as an open-ended comment format. Quantitative data were collected based on the principals' responses to the scale items. Qualitative data were based on comments on each of the scale items. Twenty-one central office administrators who were in those positions at the time of the strike were interviewed in-depth regarding their perceptions on the following aspects of the strike: (1) issues and causes; (2) relationships; (3) stress; (4) post-strike views. All of the data were collected during the field interviews. The central office administrator sample was a volunteer sample selected from the total population based on their willingness to participate. Among the findings, the following appeared to be the most significant: (1) the superintendents and school board were cited most frequently as the major cause of the strike; (2) relationships with any of the significant others were not significantly impacted by the strike; (3) the participants were most stressed during the strike. They indicated the least stress was experienced in the pre-strike period; (4) a break in relationships with significant others, especially teachers, was a major strike concern of the central office administrators; (5) Tucson Education Association was perceived by the majority of the participants to have acted in a responsible manner before and during the strike; (6) the consensus agreement was considered by the majority of the participants to be a fair and equitable resolution to the problem; (7) central office administrators, for the most part, did not perceive the strike as having a negative impact on their effectiveness as central office administrators; and (8) the efforts of the district to effectively meet district educational goals was not negatively impacted by the strike circumstances, according to slightly less than a majority of the participants.

In this study, the investigator sought to ascertain what personal relationships existed within the organizational structure of the Tucson (Arizona) Education Association (TEA), and between these TEA members and the Tucson Unified School District officials before, during, and after the teacher strike of 1978. The investigator reviewed literature in the areas of: (1) labor relations, (2) teacher strike activity, (3) perceptual psychology, (4) relational theory, and (5) organizational theory. On this basis, an interview schedule was constructed to ascertain certain of the personal relationships of selected Tucson Education Association members. Forty members of the Tucson Education Association, selected on the basis of nomination by strike-related TEA leaders, were interviewed utilizing the interview schedule. The data thus collected was collated, analyzed, and presented in the form of: (1) case studies and (2) descriptions of responses grouped by subquestions derived from the statement of the problem. Additional data permitting the construction of a chronology of strike-associated events prior to, during, and after the strike were gathered from local news sources, Tucson Education Association literature, and TEA respondents. The study highlighted the apparent lack of supportive and productive relationships existing between Tucson Education Association respondents and Tucson Unified School District officials before, during, and after the strike. Such human relationships appear, according to this study, to be central to the productivity of a school district's professional staff. From this perception, the investigator suggested that school district management personnel, while concerning themselves with the technical aspects of their organizations, should display an equal concern for the quality of the human relationships within their organizations.

The purposes of this study were to identify public school districts that currently offer, or are planning to offer, transitional first-grade programs, to describe existing transitional programs, to describe the genesis of transitional first-grade classes in the North Texas area, and to assist in the establishment of a networking system for schools in the North Central Texas area that currently have, or are planning to have, transitional first-grade classes. The 158 school districts in Regions 10 and 11 were surveyed. The findings of the study indicate that about one-third of the districts offered transitional first-grade programs during the 1988-89 school year, and two-thirds of the districts saw a need for transitional first-grade classes. These transitional programs were implemented to meet the needs of children who had completed kindergarten but were not ready for regular first grade. Transitional first-grade programs focus primarily on language arts and math skills for kindergarten and early first grade. While curriculum materials vary from district to district, language arts is likely to be based on a whole-language approach, and math is likely to focus on manipulatives.. Kindergarten teacher observation is used in the screening procedures in the majority of the districts. A number of instruments are used in the transitional screening process. The Gesell School Readiness Inventory, used in 24% of the districts, is most popular. About one-half of the districts use an informal method of evaluating the transitional program. A pretest-posttest method is used in 32% of the districts, and a longitudinal student tracking method is used in 20% of the districts. Of the 158 districts surveyed, 122, or 77%, of the districts are interested in being included in a networking system to exchange information about transitional first-grade programs.

The purpose of this study was to determine if practical wisdom can be recognized as one factor that may be attributed to the success of individuals sitting in the position of superintendent in a school district. Practical wisdom is defined as something developed over time through experiences and knowledge. It guides decision making on moral and practical issues. The changing political climate coupled with increased accountability and the increased rate at which superintendents have been retiring, have created the necessity to identify some factors that contribute to a superintendent’s success. This study provides an assessment of practical wisdom in a single case study analyzed through this research of a female superintendent in a medium sized school district.

Parents of children with disabilities face a daunting task when it comes to advocating for the rights of their children in school districts across the country. Yet, when these same parents also work inside those school districts, the challenge to balance their advocacy within the expectations of their employment may come with barriers. The intent of this study was to understand the experiences of people who are parents of children with disabilities, as well as educators, and have had to advocate for their own children inside the school districts where they work. Using a heuristic case study approach, this study incorporates the author's own experiences of advocating for her son, along with the experiences encountered by three parents of children with disabilities, who are also educators. Findings indicate parents who are also school district employees experience similar difficulties in advocating for their children with disabilities than parents who do not work for the school districts. Tensions rise between these school district employees and their child's school when the parent/educators feel their child's needs are not being met, communication breaks down between the two sides, and when educators on the inside do not understand the child's disability, the needs associated with that disability, and the accommodations which allow the child to be successful in an educational environment. These parents/educators also perceive repercussions regarding their employment within the school district should they need to advocate for the rights of their children.

This qualitative study examined organizational change including the necessary steps that a large school district took in planning and implementing a reform effort. This project told a story of one school district's experience. The study covered a five year period from 1990 to 1995 in the 30,000 student Salem-Keizer School District of Salem, Oregon. The examination included a description of school board action in 1989 where a staff recommendation to reform middle schools and move sixth graders to middle schools with a seven-eight grade configuration was denied. The study then continued with an examination of the change process during which sixth graders were moved to middle schools, reforms were implemented, three new schools were opened and five schools were remodeled to accommodate the new programs. This reform, however, was not without problems. Those issues were discussed in the study. The retrospective part of the study reflected upon the project through the analysis of district documents and the results of nine field interviews of middle school principals using a set of seven questions designed to reveal the principals' perceptions of the process. The study then triangulated the results of the interviews by examining information from a focus group comprised of Salem-Keizer curriculum directors and staff development specialists who were asked the same seven questions. The study answered the questions: "Did the district do what the community asked it to do in creating middle schools that afford students a more effective educational program?" and "What are the implications for the district in undertaking a major reform effort?" Themes that emerged from the study included the following: organizational change is highly personalized; change should have a literature and research foundation; stakeholders must participate in the change process; communication must be consistent and must be "two way"; one person must be the individual in charge of the change; a change process requires vigilance, constant reevaluation and refinement; staff development is crucial in a change process; and if a district wants new thinking, then new people must help in organization change. / Graduation date: 1997

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Washington, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 165-170).

In this dissertation, I analyze the effects of competition in education markets. In my first essay, I analyze the effects of different concentration measures on school personnel salaries. I find evidence that principals have more bargaining power over their salaries than teachers in Washington that through rent-sharing, principals start getting positive returns from increasing concentration at lower levels of concentration than that of teachers. Moreover, I present that the pattern of teacher salaries versus concentration in Washington is similar to that in Texas, but the inflection point in Washington is at substantially lower levels of concentration-a finding which can be attributed to Washington's being a union state versus Texas's being a right-to-work-state. In my second essay, I examine the effects of various measures of competition on school district cost inefficiency in a stochastic frontier framework. My results show that cost frontier is U-shaped in Texas with large positive returns to the scale over a relatively big range and mild diseconomies of scale over an extended range. In addition, I find that school district cost inefficiency increases significantly when market concentration increases. Furthermore, I present the competitive effect/scale effect trade-off through a couple of simulation exercises. The findings from both of my studies show that the effects of competition are barely sensitive to measuring the competition with different sets of relevant competitors. On the other hand, sensitivity of the effects of competition to using different definitions of the education markets is significant. Yet, the range of these estimated effects is relatively small, and the sign and the significance of the effect of competition generally do not change when a meaningful definition of education markets is employed to measure concentration. Furthermore, I present that the concentration measures employed in my essays are endogenous. I control for the endogeneity with several instrumental variables including degrees of lagged educational outputs in the neighboring schools, lagged education market characteristics, and counts of streams. My results imply that the hypothesized effects of competition may be underestimated due to the endogeneity. While the plausibility of competitive effect's being underestimated bolsters the importance of the competitive effects I find, it also strengthens my criticism of using uni-dimensional concentration indices as indicators of competition in the education markets.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 1999. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2754. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 27-29).

This study examined the perceptions of teachers on the picket line and in the classroom during the 1978 Tucson Unified School District teacher strike and the perceptions and relationships they experienced. Literature from sociology, psychology and education was reviewed to develop the theoretical framework. It is recognized in the literature that theory has utility in designing, shaping and organizing research, giving meaning to data and summarizing and interpreting the findings. The theoretical framework was comprised of two sections: the perceptual and the relational. In the perceptual, self-adequacy, self-concept and threat-anxiety were included. In the relational, communication, shared interests and reference groups were included. An interview schedule of twenty-one items based on the theoretical framework was developed and administered to forty selected school district teachers. The twenty-one questions were derived from the two major sections and the six subsections of the theoretical framework. Some demographic data were also collected. Strikers and non-strikers agreed more than they disagreed. There was general agreement among both strikers and non-strikers that human relationships were handled so ineptly by the superintendent and school board that the teachers perceived themselves to be demeaned and held unworthy.